[smcl]

It's weird that racism seems to be a common theme\complaint about taxi drivers in many countries. The stereotype of the racist cab driver - usually a loud guy oversharing some opinions about black\indian\romanian immigrants - is pretty ingrained in the UK psyche, and many people I know have had to endure awkward and cringeworthy conversations in black cabs.

[nicolas_t]

The education level of the average taxi driver is usually not very high and racism is not evenly distributed among educated and not very educated people.

So even if there's 20-25% of people voting FN (the racist party) in France, the percentage of people with a relatively lower level of education is much higher.

And the other aspect of this is that people tend to not often talk with people of lower socio-economic level so talking to Taxi driver is one of the few occasions where people end up talking with people with drastically different level. (The same effect also happens in Hair Salons).